Sunday, June 28, 2009

our first expulsion ever

On the 25th of June, Gizmodo ran a "story" about how Ray Bradbury had lamented the internet as distracting and meaningless when asked if his books would show up online. He then defended public libraries. Though we here use the internet often and find it valuable overall, hey its Ray Bradbury, and hes not entirely wrong. How many times have any of US thought to search for something, only to forget it when we sat down, but stayed there anyway and just fucked around the internet. Or ended up 10 profiles deep on Myspace, or 10 videos deep on Youtube. The internet can be a colossal waste of time and someone pointing that out isn't a problem for us.

BUT it was a problem for Dan Nosowitz at Gizmodo. He felt the best way to "report" this story was to belittle Ray Bradbury, referring to him as crazy and waving him off as just an old man saying silly things. WAS it necessary? NO, of course it wasn't. But on more than one occasion, Gizmodo has made it clear that we are LUCKY to have them "report" to us and however much snobby, snooty, better than you, attitude they give out, we should be thankful for.

We forgave Gizmodo when they acted like dicks at CES with their prank of TV-B-Gone. We looked the other way when Gizmodo lied about having firsthand news about the iPhone, only to have it be about a Linksys product.

We gave them the benefit of the doubt, when they were once the biggest detractors of Comcast and its fight against Net Neutrality, only to then see Comcast begin to advertise on Gizmodo, and then watch the stories about Comcast dry up. IN FACT, today if you search Comcast on Gizmodo, you get ads made to look like posts. Was it deplorable to sell out like that? Yes. Did they betray their readers? Of course. Does it make them little more than cheap scumbags? Absolutely. But who knows, maybe their kids were hungry and needed bread and shoes.

But this is the last straw. To be a dick to someone of Bradburys caliber, to pick on an old man, just because he dislikes something to burn hours on, was childish and sad given that YOU Dan Nosowitz, and YOU Gizmodo, are in NO WAY better than Bradbury is. So little do you compare that it almost comes off like jealousy. THEN when one of our members tried to comment the story twice, making clear his disapproval, his comments never showed up, BUT many comments agreeing with the story and shitting all over Bradbury are still there.

Ergo vis a vis, here to with, eeehh..from this day on, Gizmodo is stripped of its title as an Honorary Vice Presidential Action Ranger, never to darken our computers again with their petty, pathetic bullshit.